ON a halcyon evening last July, I found myself sitting at an outdoor cafe across from Lucca's icing-white church of San Michele, listening to ''Che Gelida Manina'' from ''La Boheme'' by Puccini. The aria drifted across the piazza from the elegant...

ERICA BROWN is a writer based in London. L ucca is for walking. The longest diameter between the old walls is barely a mile, and it is easy to see a great deal in a day merely by meandering along the gray flagstone streets, while the buildings on...

LUCCA in September can make one forget the Renaissance ever happened. Situated just above the knee of the Italian boot barely 20 miles from the Mediterranean Sea, this Tuscan city of 87,500, long prosperous and well pleased with itself, uses the...

By WILLIAM HOWARD ADAMS; William Howard Adams, a fellow of the Myrin Institute, is making an international television documentary on gardens

LEAD: Lucca's guests have never been disappointed. Or so it would seem from reading their encomiums stretching back as far as Montaigne who rode through the villa-strewn countryside in 1581 recording the scene. Even a visitor today would agree that...